Mt Whitney Attempt #1

This weekend was supposed to be our amazing 22 mile hike to the summit of Mt Whitney. However, mother nature had other plans. A storm came rolling in Wed/Thurs into central and Southern Cali. So we made it a bit over half way and ended up traveling 12 miles roundtrip. I still camped with my friends at Mt Whitney Portal on Thursday night. It was cold, but not as bad as it could have been. Several decent sized thunder storms came rolling through during the night. At 4am we woke up and put on lots of layers and started our ascent. We pretty much new today was not going to be the day to reach the summit of Whitney. Instead we decided to see how the conditions were and how far we could get. We ended up going 6 miles up to Trail Camp at 12,000 feet. It was ridiculous up there. On Setp 21st (1st day of FALL!) there must have been 6 inches of snow and nearing white out conditions due to the wind gusts. While taking a break up there, we decided we had gone far enough as the weather started to look like it was turning for the worst. I will make it up there, hopefully next summer. And I will not attempt this in Sept. again. Here are a few shots from the hike. From looking at them, you would think it was winter! (The temp at 12,000 feet was about 19 degrees!)I spent the remainder of the day and the next morning photographing the Lone Pine area. Here are a few more shots.

Winter is in the Air

I love it...winter is definately in the air! Today was nice and cool...in the 60s with clouds that were threatening rain. I love it. It's only September and I feel like we could be skiing real soon. We are hoping for a nice cold and wet winter here in Cali. I can't wait to be on the slopes at Mammoth. On the other hand I'm supposed to be hiking Mt Whitney this Friday and they are calling for a possibility of snow in the mountains. I just hope we get to go up there.

Nike Run Hit Remix 2007 Results

I was checking my stats and noticed that I'm geting lots of hits on my blog. I also noticed its because people are searching google for the results of the Nike Run. So go to this link instead if you want to see how you did...

http://www.active.com/results/display_html.cfm?results_file=1312271_20060925105319.htm

For thos of you that know me and are wondering just how I did. My time was as I said in a previous post, slowere then last year by about 3 minutes. But I did finish my last race in the 25-29 age group in 37th place. Not bad considering there were over 1200 in my age group.

Nike Run

Well, I honestly think the Nike run was affected by my being sick a week earlier. I had lots of problems, including a constant runny nose and some stomach pains. Therefore I didn't do as well as I did last year. I finished the 5 miles race in about 41 minutes 35 seconds, where as my time last year was 38 minutes 20 seconds. Oh well. So no personal records set this year.

Saturday was insane as I did the run, came home went to relay for life and ran another 4 miles, then went to my friends bachloerette party. So I am very exhausted today and not doing much.

July Finalist!

I checked the online photography contest I entered a while back and noticed that I am a July finalist! How awesome. Even if I don't win, at least I was picked as one of the top three photos for the week.

http://www.quantum-leap-strategies.com/photo_contest/photo_contest_flowers.html

Going to the Top of the World...

Okay so maybe not quite...but at least the top of the Continental United States! Mt Whitney! Oh boy! I've been wanting to do this since moving to cali and I made it official today. Next week I will be doing another insane hike. This one is 21 miles round trip and goes to the highest peak in the continentatl US and stands at over 14, 000 feet! I'm going to do it with some people from work and Dave will not be joining me in this insane trip. Im so excited to be doing this and I sure hope I can make it okay. I imagine we'll start hiking in the wee hours of the morning and probably won't get back until night time. Beter bring the headlamp! I'm really so excited I get this opportunity.

Addicted to the travel channel

For those of you that know me well, you know that I am not much of a TV person. I really can't just sit in front of a Tv and not do other things. It really drives me crazy (unless I'm sick or something). But I do have to say I think I'm addicted to the travel channel. I love seeing all the new and interesting things to do. It used to be that when I turned on the Tv I immediatly went to TLC for some home improvement show, but lately my first click is chanell 277 - Travel Channel. As of last nights Latin America show, I really want to go to Chile and I want to see Penguins! Ahh, just another place to add to my very long list!

European May Vacation Slideshow

Here is our Europe slideshow finally...hope you like the Irish music.

Nature Valley Commercial

Ever seen the latest Nature Valley Granola Bar Commercial. All you see are some girls legs in the water, a lake, and some gorgous mountains. HeHe... I love seeing this commercial. Mostly because I know excalty where it is at. Convict Lake in the Eastern Sierras, near mammoth. I love the sierras...so gorgeous...and they are right here in Cali! Sweet!

New slideshow on the way...check back soon (Europe).

I'm on a slideshow kick now!

Another slideshow. Im so happy that I have a way to upload my slideshows, besides the photodex website. Now that it works I'll be doing more of these. Here are Dave and I's anniversary photos from last October. These photos are thanks to our wonderful photographer Jennifer Skog

Trying something new...

Just realized Blogspot lets you upload video files up to 100MB, so I'm trying to upload a slideshow from Photodex. Let's see if it works! If so, maybe I'll start posting more of my slideshows to share. This one is from my friends wedding in June.

Blogging just beacuse I can...

Today is my day off of work. With the holiday I only had to work 3 days! Whoohoo! But all the running around the last 3 weekends and working long hours at work to flex my time has left me not feeling to good. I 've caught a bit of a cold, although I think I'm starting to feel better. I haven't left the house all day. Now I'm waiting for Dave to come home from work and my delivery of Panera soup! Reminds me of the time I surprised him at his place in FL with soup when he was pretty sick. I guess its become a bit of a routine. So anyway today has just been cleaning and booking stuff for Costa Rica. Its hard to believe we go on vacation is less than a month! I cant wait though. We are planning on spending my 30th birthday rappelling down waterfalls and going to the Tabacon Hot Springs. I am so excited! I have all our hotels booked, so now its just our activities that I have to finish planning. I also booked a zip line tour today. We are going on this awesome 2 day rafting tour also and get our own riverside bungalow complete with hammock and outdoor shower! Sweet! This is going to be the best vacation ever!

In other news, lately I have been asked to photograph 2 weddings next year! Yeah...2! Crazy, huh! Both are coworkers of mine. One of the weddings is in NJ. So I guess I'll be traveling next Nov. I just cant believe they want me to do it! So now I'm actually thinking of upgrading my camera to the 5D or maybe even the new 40D. But I love the idea of full frame with the 5D. So I just don't know! Still doing some thinking before I make the big purchase.

As of next weekend I am back to racing! Yipee! Four of us are going to participate in the Nike Run Hit Remix next Saturday morning. This is always hard to "RACE" due to the fact that there are 10,000 people. So I just do my best. This year main act is MC Hammer. Hopefully I can meet or break last years time. But I don't know I did pretty good last year and I haven't been out on the road nearly as much this year. I just realized that as of Oct 11th I 'm be in another age group. Ahhh! That stinks. I've always heard running gets more competitive as your get older.

South of the Border!

This weekend Dave and I took off for San Diego. We enjoyed 3.5 days in SD (we took a half day off on Friday). On Friday we came down early to go to the Del Mar Horse track. Not only for the horse races, but also to see one of our favorite bands...Angels and Airwaves ( look for there new CD in October!). The concert was pretty awesome. If you don't know A&A, its a spin off band from when Blink 182 broke up. Tom Delonge from Blink decided he wanted to create his own band...and they rock! Saturday we didn't have a lot planned. So we ended up in Mexico! Yup, we drove down to the border and walked over to Tijuana. It was definitely crazy. This was my second time over there, but its been a while. It's just crazy how once you pass the border things become more dirty and run down, but cheap. We had several $1 coronas and $2 margaritas. We bought some other stuff too including $10 bottle of Kahlua. Going over there for the day just makes you realize how thankful you are for living in the USA. This was Dave's first time there. I think at the time he was pretty much ready to leave, but now that he looked back on it he realized he had lots of fun and was glad he went. Although he did get to practice saying the work "no" a lot! We returned after about 4 hours and headed back to the resort for some pool time.

The next day we did some local wine tasting at some very small wineries! We were afraid Temecula wineries maybe closed for the holiday so we decided to use Sunday for Wine tasting Instead. We ended up with 4 bottles of wine to take back. We ended to day with more pool time at the resort, sunset at Del Mar, Dinner on Coronado Island, and a couple of drinks in the Gaslamp district. On Labor day we headed over to one of my favorite locations, La Jolla, for kayaking and seal watching. If you've never been to La Jolla I totally recommend it. Both the shore and the cove. It's an amazing little beach town with fabulous cliffs and scenery. Definitely one of my favorite coastal spots to visit. There were very few seals around but we did spot one while out on the kayak. After kayaking we went to play in the Pacific Ocean. We both forgot how fun it can be to play in the big waves! We took a few photos and then headed home to Lancaster after a nice Italian dinner.